Sacred Hunger (11 page)

Billy did not see this done as he was hauled off now into a smaller room and seated on a stool. The same two men stood beside him. One of them had a badly split lip, he noted with satisfaction.

“There’s yen blaggard earned his shillin”,” he said. His right eye was half closed up.

‘now then, Billy boy,” the dark-complexioned man said. “We have had our little difference. It is a simple enough matter I have to put to you. My name is Haines, you will get to know me well. I am bosun on a fine, new-built ship an” we finds ourselves needing one or two likely lads. Now you are a likely lad an’ no mistake, a fine little strutter, you are. You owe money here that you cannot pay by any manner of means.

Where are you going to get three shillings an’ four pence, darlin’ Billy? You signs for the voyage all fair and square, or the landlord calls the officers an’ lays charges agin you. There is plenty of people to swear you never had no purse when you come in. He will swear debt an’ assault agin you, an’ he will put his heart into it—you have near crippled him.”

Billy spat some blood on to the floor.

‘I’m right sorry to hear that,” he said. He was caught and he knew it. What Haines was telling him was an old story. “I walked in the wrong door, didn’t I?”’ he said. ‘That gang o” thieves shares out my purse, you pays the score here an’ docks it out my wages. What manner o’ ship is she? Where is she bound? You are never a bosun of a navy ship.”

‘What difference does that make?”’

“If she is not a navy ship,” Billy said slowly, “she must be a Guineaman you wouldn’t get up to this for a ordinary merchant vessel.”

“Well, my game cock, which is it to be? It will be proved agin you, never doubt it, you will go to prison till it is paid. An” how long will that take, my bantam? Men have died in prison for the sake of a shillin’. You been in prison before, Billy?”’

Billy looked at the bosun’s face. The narrow-set eyes were observing him with close interest.

There was not much cruelty in Billy’s nature and it came to him now, with naive surprise, that Haines was getting pleasure from this. Spattered with blood as he was and still half dazed, he had his dignity to think of. He sat up straight on his stool, gripping the sides for balance. ‘Blair is the name,” he said.

“It is only my mates call me Billy.”

Not very far away, in Mount Street, Daniel Calley came in from the rain. He had been working since first light, carrying sheep carcasses and crates of fish up from the quayside to the top of the market in Stone Street. He had ninepence in his pocket and he was wet through and hungry. Also, in an obscure way, he was distressed. As usual the bargeman and stallkeepers between them had cheated him and as usual he had not been able to understand how. The shift to symbolic modes of reasoning, the essential transfer from concrete to abstract normally occurring in the course of childhood, had never occurred at all in Calley’s case. He could not work out what was due to him. He puzzled at it as he toiled back and forth but the figures would not lodge in his head. Sometimes he was driven to ask, but he could not understand the glib explanations. He would clench his big fists in misery—not so much at thoughts of the money but at being derided and treated unkindly. A simple sort of joking was the best way with him then; the men who cheated him knew that. Like a child he could be confused and softened by jokes; but a wrong word to Calley when he was excited or disturbed could have dangerous consequences.

He entered the pothouse where he usually ate when he had money and often slept—they let him sleep in the yard in a little covered space behind the chicken coop. He took off leather harness and back-pads and fish-slimed apron and shook the rain out of his hair. He was squat and very muscular, broader in the nape than the skull, so that his head was tapering and blunt like a seal’s—a resemblance that the rain, by sleeking down his brown silky hair, had made more obvious. In the close, low-raftered room he gave off a steam of wet clothing and sheep’s blood and fish oil, enriching the effluvia of boiled mutton and stale beer already resident there.

He asked the serving girl, whose name was Kate and who was fourteen and had one leg shorter than the other, to bring him mutton broth—all the place offered.

While it was coming he thought about his entertainment for the rest of the evening. He knew the cost of certain basic things and on his fingers he could balance accounts. He knew he could have his mutton broth and then some treacle tart from the pastry-cook’s on the corner —he was fond of sweet things—and that Kate would come out into the yard with him for two of his pennies and that he would still have enough for a pancake next morning…

These thoughts were producing a simultaneous salivation and erection, when a man came and sat at his table, a tallish, wiry, sharp-featured man in a blue pea-jacket and wide-bottomed trousers and with his hair in a pigtail.

“Clammy night,” this newcomer said.

“Keeps on ra”, don’t it?”’

Calley smiled but said nothing—he was always shy with strangers. The saliva of his anticipations made little, stretching webs at the corners of his mouth. His eyes held an unchanging radiance, as at some remote delight whose source was long forgotten. He had a complexion a woman might have envied, clear and pale, without the smallest blemish. “I got wet,” he said.

“Aye, did you so?”’ The stranger cast a brisk eye over the harness and the thick leather pads against the wall. “Been porterin”?”’

The broth arrived and Calley launched a noisy assault on it. “I been workin” in the market,” he said between mouthfuls.

‘I see it has give you a happytite. You must of got two shillin” at least for a heavy day like that.”

Calley looked up defensively. Some of his earlier feelings of frustration and distress had returned, but it did not occur to him to lie. ‘I got nincpence,” he said.

“What? You have been labourin” all the livelong day with a saddle on you like a horse an’ you gets ninepence for it? I can scarce believe my ears.”

‘I ain’t a horse,” Calley said.

“That is a utterly pernacious state of affairs, it is scandalous.” The stranger was looking round the room and shaking his head in amazement.

He had a peering, sniffing way of seeming to interrogate his surroundings. “It is enough to freeze the marrer in a man’s bones,” he said.

Calley rested his spoon in his broth. “You sayin” I am a horse?”’

‘allyou’re a man an” a fine strong one an’ good-lookin’—I’ll wager the ladies is after you, ain’t they? Linin’ up for it, ain’t they?”’

‘Kate likes me.”

“I dare say she does, an’ who would not? I have took to you myself. Here, try this.” The stranger drew a bottle from the capacious side-pocket of his jacket. ‘Take a swig of this, then tell me if you have tasted a better brandy.”

Calley drank and the liquor coursed through him, bringing with it the knowledge that this man wished him well. “Good brandy,” he said.

The stranger drank and smacked his lips.

“Nectar of the gods,” he said. “Here, have some more, that’s right. What’s your name?”’

“Dan’l,” Calley said shyly.

“Tell me, Dan’l, what is a man like you doin”, slavin’ up hill an’ down dale, for a few pennies? You are not a horse, but they are saddlin’ you up like a horse, they are workin’ you like a horse, see what I mean?”’

‘Kate comes out in the yard with me,” Calley said. He did not want this new friend to think that his portering was the only thing about him.

“An” well she might. I expect you show her a good length, don’t you?”’

A moment of inspiration came to Calley.

‘Like a horse,” he said. He saw with delight that the other was laughing at this and he began laughing too.

“That’s a good ‘un. Listen, I have took to you, an” I want to do you a favour. I am mate on a fine new ship that is bound for Africa an’ I have got the idea that I can obtain you a berth on her by exertin’ my influence with the captain. I wouldn’t do it for everyone, but we are mates, ain’t we?”’

Calley smiled. His mouth shone innocently with mutton fat. ‘That’s right,” he said.

The mate pushed the bottle over. “Have another swaller,” he said. “Africa, there’s a place for you. Sunshine, golden beaches, as much palm wine as you can drink, trees loaded with fruit, thick with it; all you have to do is reach up an” take it. I tell you, it is a earthly paradise. An’ the wimmen! Bigob, they are hot.” He kissed his fingers with an extravagant gesture and a smacking sound very fascinating to Calley. ‘Sable Venus,” the mate said. “They will do anythin” you want.

Hot—they are always on fire. It is the diet, all them peppers, it is the climate, it is their nature.”

‘Sable Venus,” Calley repeated softly.

Neither of these words meant anything to him, but pronounced together they had a deeply suggestive sibilance that fell on his ear like music. He drank some more from the bottle. “What will they do?”’ he said.

“I am goin’ to tell you somethin’ now that I have varrified from personal experience. They have got these highly developed muscles in their cunnies, they can fuck you just by squeezin’. They are trained up to it from earliest infancy.” He paused for a moment, observing the effects of the brandy. Then he said, ‘allyou can try them wimmen if you want, Dan’l. Why don’t you come along with me? You gets twenty-five shillin” a month an’ your vittles. You can leave that harness standin’ there agin the wall an’ come along with me. You will stand up like a man, you will not go creepin’ about with a saddle on your back.”

‘not like a horse.” Eagerly Calley waited for his friend to laugh again at the joke. “I got two legs, not four,” he said.

The mate got to his feet. “Let’s be goin” then,” he said. ‘allyou needn’t fetch an” carry for them bastids any more.”

Calley got up too, caught in a wave of enthusiasm. ‘Them bastids,” he said. “They can carry their own sacks o” turnips.”

‘no more sheep guts for you,” the mate said.

“They can get someone else to do it.”

“Someone else can do it,” Calley said. He was still laughing but rather uncertainly now.

“You come along with me, I will see you all right.”

But the mirth had left Calley’s face, to be replaced by a look of anxiety. “No,” he said, “I can’t come now.” He felt unhappy to be disappointing his friend but he had thought suddenly of Kate and the treacle tart.

Barton was a sensitive man in his way and he had noted the change of expression. He put an arm round Calley’s shoulders. ‘I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We are only out in the stream.

You come along with me now an” look the ship over.

If you don’t like what you see, you can be back again within the hour.”

The knowledge that Deakin was worth money had been in Jane Britto’s mind for some time, but she did not know that she intended to sell him until he spoke of leaving.

She had been waiting in the cellar where they lived for her husband and Deakin to get back, standing half stupefied in the steam of washing, with the gasping cries of the baby in her ears and no drink and no money to send out for any. But it was only when she heard them that she felt the clutch of rage at her throat.

First came the scrape of their boots in the alley above, then the clatter down the cellar steps. The two of them came through the door, filling the low room with their voices and bodies. Perhaps the rage sprang from this, the intrusion, though there was little here she could have wanted to defend, in this dank place with the mangle and tub against the wall, smells of rank bacon and tallow fat, the sick baby, the two children squabbling together on a mattress in the corner. But there is no world so wretched that it cannot be violated and Jane felt her body stiffen as she looked at the two men. They were wet and smelled of drink and Britto was jovial and Deakin, as usual, serious comth much she took in.

‘What have you got for us to eat?”’ Britto said, almost as soon as he was inside the door. “Me and Jim in famishin”, ain’t we, mate?”’ He was a stocky, dogged man with bad teeth and steady eyes and too much suffusion of blood in his face. The abruptness of his speech she knew for a sign of failure—they had been looking for casual work on the docks.

‘Me and Jim is famishin”,” she repeated, with a sudden strident mimicry that astonished them.

‘Me and Jim is a pair o” pisspots.”

She would have liked to go on longer in this oblique, ironical vein, but rage got the better of her.

Her voice rose and shrilled. ‘Proud on yerselves, are you? Think you are men? Where is the rest of it?”’

The smile left Britto’s face. He looked uncertain for a moment, then angry. “Where is what?”’ he said. “What are you talking about?”’

“The money what you have kept back for yer fambly. The penny-worth o” juniper-juice what you have brought home for yer wife.”

‘We didn’t find nothin”,” Britto said sullenly. He glanced at the silent man beside him but found no support there, in the tanned face, the serious, reckless eyes.

‘no good looking at him. You’d do better to look at them.” She motioned violently towards the mattress in the corner, and at once, frightened by the gesture or by the prospect of blows to follow, the white-faced little boy and girl began gasping and crying.

“You trollop, stow your noise. I ain’t got nothin” to give you.” Anger at being obliged to state the fact thickened his voice. He took two steps towards her. ‘allyou loud bitch,” he said. “You better mum your dubber.”

“My arse.” She felt rage and fear together.

He was not less likely to strike her with the other man there. “Where’d you get the drink then? Think I can’t smell it on you?”’

“We went up town,” Deakin said, in his light, dispassionate voice. “We were holding horses” heads for some gentry. They gave us threepence between us an’ we drank it.” He paused briefly, then in the same tone said, ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow comearly morning.”

He was taken by surprise himself at the announcement—he had intervened only to avert a row. But the main decisions of his life had been like this, recognitions of some truth, something self-evident, that had to be acted on.

“Devon,” he said. “That’s where I am going.”